Huntley felt “hounded” by police
Former caretaker Ian Huntley felt “hounded” by police during the search for Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, a court heard today.
Soham Village College’s vice principal Margaret Bryden told a jury at the Old Bailey that Mr Huntley talked of being depressed and wanted to take time off work.
Following inaccurate media reports that the bodies may have been found on August 13th, Huntley admitted to Mrs Bryden that he had been taking anti-depressants.
She said: “We talked about the possibility of the girls actually not being alive at that point and that facilities would have to be provided in school.
“He told me that he had been to his GP and he had been given medication and was being treated for depression and high blood pressure.”
She said that several times during a conversation five days after the girls went missing Mr Huntley said he was “the last person to see them alive”, and said “if only I told them something different”.
Mrs Bryden knew police had left a message for the girls’ abductor on Jessica’s phone and said Mr Huntley had asked her: “How would they charge up the phone if it was dead?”
Asked about Ms Carr and Mr Huntley’s relationship, Mrs Bryden said she knew they argued and the rows were “more in the form of shouting and throwing things at each other”.
Mrs Bryden told the court earlier that she had interviewed Huntley for the school’s caretaker position.
She said the previous caretaker had been dismissed for having an ‘inappropriate relationship with 13-year-old pupil’ and described Mr Huntley as ‘level-headed’. She said he had told them that if a schoolgirl became attracted to him at work he ‘would report it to his line manager or principal’.
‘Here we had a very sensible approach to it, someone who was going to marry, whose fiancee was there, and a very level-headed person,’ she said.
Mrs Bryden confirmed that such an incident had occurred and Mr Huntley had immediately reported it as he had said he would.
Mr Huntley denies murdering ten-year-old schoolfriends Holly and Jessica in August last year.
The two girls went missing on August 4th from their hometown of Soham in Cambridgeshire. Their bodies were discovered in a ditch near Lakenheath, Suffolk, almost two weeks later.
Mr Huntley’s former girlfriend Maxine Carr, 26, denies attempting to pervert the course of justice and assisting an offender.
